Hi all,
I recently purchased a new RD800 and I'm mostly really happy with it, except for the tonewheel organ sounds. I wish I had played with them more before purchasing. The problem I am having is that the percussion doesn't work on a new note when you're holding down another note, and sometimes even if I play two new notes at once. This seems seriously wrong - I can't remember playing another organ sound where this is the case, and I regularly play a lot of other organs, including actual Hammonds, as well as clonewheels like Nords, Korgs, etc. This seems to be true of all the tonewheel sounds on my RD800. Is this a bug? I checked I have the latest firmware. It results in not really being able to cut through the mix when playing live and basically means I can't play this as an organ live. Is it supposed to be like this or is there a setting I can change to make it stop happening? I tried resetting to factory default and it still does it and I can't find a relevant setting anywhere.... thoughts?
RD800 organ percussion
Re: RD800 organ percussion
Since you play real Hammonds as well I assume you know that percussion is supposed to be monophonic. If you play the notes with legato then a Hammond should not retrigger the percussion but just continue to sound at the new pitch. On my RD700nx I find that if you set percussion to fast and shut all the drawbars I can hear it play on the second note though it is quieter and pretty much inaudible with other drawbars pulled out just like on my Hammond A100. When it is set to slow and play with legato I can definitely hear many more notes and they are louder of course since it is not decaying as quickly. Have you set percussion to slow or fast decay?
Re: RD800 organ percussion
Well isn't that interesting. It sounds like I'm just wrong. There must be some other quality that is making these organ sounds unworkable for me. I didn't think this was true but I'm sure you're right since you have one. That would explain why I haven't seen any reference to this issue elsewhere. I'll do more back-to-back comparisons and see if I can figure out why I can't get this to work for me in a live setting. Maybe it's just that the decay on the percussion is wrong. Thanks!
Re: RD800 organ percussion
The organs aren't full Roland VK quality but I find them workable. You may need to tweak the sound a bit including the Leslie/Rotary effect to get it to your liking just as with real Hammonds and Leslies. I didn't like the default rotary effect on my RD700nx but after some work I got something I was happy with. Good luck, wmjosiah!